


Leaves You

by amorae



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, I am so sorry, John/Karkat is my otp, M/M, Sadstuck, Unrequited Love, blah, it is a story about love, john/karkat - Freeform, oh god why is this so sad, this is not a love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorae/pseuds/amorae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas is in love, but he has fallen in love alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaves You

**Author's Note:**

> KAY so this was my first ever Homestuck fic and it's a sadfic based off of ~*feelings*~ that I've had because who hasn't felt this way? And it's a little derpy, I'm sorry, but I hope you enjoy it. It's really innocent so je desole for the lack of sex.  
> Also, let me know how characterization is, et cetera!  
> Hope you guys enjoy it.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you pity someone. You pity someone _hard._ Sometimes—in the middle of the night, when it is dark and you are alone—you hold a truth to your chest in secrecy. That truth, or secret, is that you think you might even feel that awful human emotion called love. But if anyone were to outright ask you whether this was true, of course their face would become great acquaintances with the floor in no time at all.

There are times when you’re able to ignore it all. There are times when you are able to push past the warm, blossoming feelings that reside in your chest. There are times when you can almost forget that you pity someone, or that you’ve fallen so far in love that there seems to be no escape.

This is not one of those times.

John is standing next to you, suddenly, and of course he doesn’t notice your small reactions: the breathy exhale of air through clenched teeth, the tensing of the muscles that lace between your shoulder blades. He’s blissfully unaware as he smiles and grins and practically giggles your name. “Hi, Karkat! How are you doing?”

He places a hand on your shoulder and it’s as if a small fire’s been lit there. You feel the electric shock race from his fingertips to yours, and you wonder in that split moment how it’s possible for you to feel all of these things and be so certain that he doesn’t reciprocate them.

“I was fine until you got here, fuckass,” you sniff. He just laughs, that obnoxiously adorable laugh that makes your knees knock. You scowl at him, wanting so desperately to hit him, but being drawn to those bright pink lips. “I’m not here for your own amusement, Egbert. Your laughter is infuriating. You’re infuriating.”

“Oh, Karkat,” is all he says, and his hand runs all the way down from your shoulder to your hand. He squeezes tightly before letting go and bouncing away to do whatever it is that John does during the day.

You stand, dazed, and try to remember what his hand felt like, clutching yours.

 

The lab is small. There isn’t enough room for everyone to comfortably sleep. There are just enough rooms for each of the trolls, which makes the housing for the kids somewhat awkward. They’ve been living in the dining hall for the past few days, curling up beside each other for warmth and comfort. But the kids are growing exhausted and wary of this sleeping arrangement, and they’ve unanimously agreed to ask each of their patron troll’s to let them sleep in their rooms.

This means that John Egbert is walking up to you, an almost awkward jaunt to his step. He approaches you and smiles. His lip quirks up and his teeth are so bucktoothed, you feel the overwhelming need to punch them right out of his face. “What do you want?” you growl, your voice rising in irritation as he fiddles and blushes in front of you.

“I was wondering if you’d, uhm, if you’d mind me living with you for a while?” he asks.

The nervousness in his voice is as empowering as it is heartbreaking. You almost want to tell him no, just to see how he’d react. But you can’t do that. You know that there’s only one answer, no matter how terribly you wish that your answer would be otherwise.

You mumble your answer to him, and you watch as his face lights up in excitement and happiness. He starts babbling—talking about how the two of you will watch movies all night long, how you’ll play video games together, how much fun it will be. You mostly tune him out, because all you can think of is the happiness he’s exuding, and how you were, partially, a cause. A spark lights up in your stomach and you hope it never dies.

Then, you remember that you don’t own a couch, only a bed and a rickety old TV with an even dustier VCR and a shiny DVD player. You remember that in order to have John live with you, he will have to sleep in your bed.

 

John is trying to rap. He is failing. Dave is looking at him with a horror stricken expression as Rose casually chimes in, attempting to broaden her horizons so she can approve her psychoanalysis skills, or some shit like that. You listen in horror as John attempts to drop “sick beats,” but is in reality only making a fool of himself. You wonder what you have ever done in your life to deserve such punishment.

You distract yourself from his bad rapping by watching his body language. Occasionally, he flaps his arms spasmodically, accidentally hitting Rose with his movements. Rose simply takes it, and as you observe, you see the obvious affection rolling off of her in waves.

Fury hits you like a fucking rock to the head.

Stars flash in front of your eyes as you consider the idea that John may like Rose over you. Maybe Rose and John are meant to be, and you’ll forever be in the background, pining over the boy with the bucktoothed grin.

Your hands clench into fists. There’s adrenaline screaming through your veins and it’s all you can do not to rush up to the pair and awkwardly knock that dumb nooksniffer down.

Instead, you scowl at the two of them, Rose so obviously in love, and you imagine that John loves her back. You imagine John asking her out. You imagine their first date. You imagine their first kiss—

The pain blinds you, and you quietly hold a hand to your chest.

There is nothing you can do.

You are an afterthought, a best friend, forever stranded in the Friend Zone. Your duty is to watch John from afar while he is happy with Rose for the rest of his life. Your job is not to fucking fall in love.

Yet you went ahead and did that anyway.

 

There is no real concept of time in Alternia. All you know is that by John’s standards, it’s “late,” or “nighttime.” His eyelids drooped heavily as he fought off the need to sleep. The two of you had been sitting upright in bed, watching one of his dumb Earth movies—National Treasure, you think it was—as he had begun to drift to sleep.

He sat less than six inches away from you, and you were so very aware of that fact.

“Karkat?” he asked, his voice dripping with exhaustion. “Do trolls sleep?”

You looked over at him, and for a single second, you were stunned by the brilliance of his blue eyes. You shook yourself out of your admiration long enough to respond to him. “We don’t sleep as much as your weak and pathetic species, but we do sleep.”

“How come I’ve never…never seen you asleep?”

The conversation was drifting into dangerous waters.

“Because I don’t feel like it, fuckass. Shut up and watch the movie.”

John let out a breathless laugh and, in his exhaustion, he closed the six inch gap between the two of you. His head sat on your shoulder and he snuggled gently against the crook of your neck. “You’re so funny, Karkat,” he mumbled, his breath tickling your shoulder, even through the fabric.

That is where you are right now: the credits rolling across the screen, with a lightly snoring John resting on your shoulder.

You admire him. In this moment, you are able to stare at him in awe for as long as you like. You don’t waste the opportunity.

Everything about him is so fragile. Every curve, every pore, every inch. You love the way his nose turns up, the way his glasses rest slightly uneven on his ears. You love the way his hair is drifting into his face, gently brushing against his eyelids. There’s a light smile on his lips as he sleeps, and you wonder, vaguely, what he’s dreaming about.

There is nothing stopping you.

So you go for it.

You adjust yourself as gently as you can, and once your arm is freed, you wrap your arms around him in a tight embrace.

John snuggles into your chest, that smile quirking higher for a moment as he snuggles into the warmth.

In the exact same moment, you curse and bless your past self for agreeing to let him share rooms.

 

It’s daytime again, and John is flirting with Rose.

The frustration and anger and _hate_ you feel is tantamount to murderous rage. You watch as he shyly slips his hand into hers, and their fingers entwine together. You recognize, deep down, that they are “cute” by human standards, but you can’t allow yourself to feel that way. All you can feel is sick _sadness_ that you are losing the one you love to a girl whose pesterchum is often mistaken to be _TentacletheRapist._

You’re unable to deal with this any longer.

You stand up abruptly, causing John to look up at you with confusion. You sneer at him, snap some witty remark, and stalk off to your room.

John doesn’t follow, and that’s damn alright with you.

 

The end of the world is coming. Or at least, the world as you know it.

It’s on everyone’s mind. It’s changing everyone’s personalities. You can see it in their eyes—haunting them with each step they take. One day, John asks you if _that’s_ why you don’t sleep, and you don’t have the courage to tell him that, yes, yes that is why. That you are plagued by horrible nightmares of the end of the world and the death of all of your friends, and that if you allow yourself to sleep for longer than a few hours, you wake up screaming and crying in terror. Your response is to tell him to shut up—the most elegant response you’ve ever come up with. You’re almost disgusted by your lack of creativity, but it all dissolves when you notice the concern lingering in John’s eyes.

What he doesn’t know is that, each night, as you sleep by him, you sleep better. Heavier. That the nightmares don’t come. He is your safety blanket, and in the deep richness of the black night, you find yourself wrapping a tentative arm around his middle, drawing him closer to you. You let yourself breathe against his exposed shoulder (since the young teen sleeps without a shirt on, only in his boxers) one, two, three times, before you turn to rest your face delicately against his skin. You lay like that as you drift into sleep, knowing that you will awake long before John does.

The end of the world is coming, or at least, the end as you know it.

And you want to do something drastic and amazing. You want to bring your lips to John’s in a display of all of the emotions you’ve felt. You want to tell him that you’re in love with him, and that you don’t care if he’s not a homosexual, because what you feel for him goes beyond regular troll _or_ human emotion. It’s something else entirely, and you’re not sure what, but all you know is that you need to share it with him. You need to feel the understanding ripple between the two of you, just as you need to feel the electric bite of his lips on yours.

You wonder vaguely how in the world you’ll ever gather the courage long enough to make such a desperate declaration of love.

You wonder vaguely whether you ever will.

 

It’s morning, and for the first time, you awake after John.

He’s startled when your eyes snap awake, and you disentangle yourself so fast from his body that you’re sure you’ve accidentally hurt him. John doesn’t say anything as you gather yourself together in a huff and try to swallow the embarrassment that is rising in your throat like bile.

He’s silent as you stalk out of the room, red tears threatening to break over your eyes.

 

Days have passed, and nothing has changed, except that you’re not sleeping soundly anymore. In fact, you’re not sleeping at all, as is evidenced by the large, black circles that line your eyes. Yet there you are, sitting next to John—his shoulder bumping against yours and his hand dangerously close to your thigh. You’re watching one of your movies, since the two of you have a system worked out that one night you watch a human movie and the other night you watch a troll movie. It works out great.

Except your exhaustion and frustration are coming to a climax, and you can feel John’s heat radiating next to you. The desire to pull him close and press your black lips against his forehead is overwhelming. The desire to call him yours is causing you to inhale sharply.

John turns his head towards you and gives you a perplexed look. “I don’t understand,” he says, and his eyebrows furrow together in that annoying way.

All you want to do is kiss his forehead.

So, in your sleep deprived state, that’s what you do. You lean forward, instead of responding to him verbally, and press your lips against the space between his eyebrows. His stunned reaction is evident as his body tenses beneath you, but you’re too tired to notice.

You trail a kiss to the tip of his nose, and finally, to his lips.

They’re so warm. They are pink and lush and soft and beautiful and, gog, you’re going to remember this for the rest of your life, aren’t you?

But John isn’t kissing you back, and within seconds, his hands are fisted in your shirt and he’s shoving you away from him forcefully.

“Karkat,” he says, unevenly. “I don’t like you that way.”

The look on his face is heartbreaking; there’s so much sadness and regret laced through that expression that it makes you feel guilty for even thinking of taking advantage of him in that way.

You can’t help yourself as you choke out, “Is it Rose?” And you feel even worse as John nods, and his eyes light up at the mention of her name. But the frown stays plastered on his face.

He slowly gets up out of the bed, disentangling himself from blankets and limbs. He gathers his things slowly, muttering underneath his breath that maybe it isn’t a good idea for him to sleep here anymore, that maybe he should go sleep in Vriska’s room, and that he’s so sorry, so, so sorry, don’t you believe him?

He walks to the door, and casts a withering glance at you as you curl up with your knees pressed to your cheeks. You stare at him, unable to retort or respond in your usual angry ways. All you feel is depletion, and all you can think of is just how beautiful he truly is, and how lucky you are to have had the opportunity to kiss him—even if it was a stolen kiss.

With that, John waves a sad wave, and leaves you.


End file.
